VH1 has yanked Ev and Ocho, a spinoff from its Basketball Wives franchise, that would have followed Dolphins wide receiver Chad Johnson and Evelyn Lozada in the early stages of their marriage, after Johnson was arrested over the weekend on battery charges. It’s one thing to pretend that people who don’t actually like each other are friends, or that people who are friends are fighting, or that celebrities are in danger of fake explosions. It’s to give a guy whose wife ended up at the hospital with a cut forehead while he got dragged off to jail a chance to sell himself to audiences as an appealing newlywed.

Entertainment companies have choices about what kind of people they want to be in business and what kinds of fantasies they want to sell. Johnson is hardly a money machine like Charlie Sheen, so the decision to drop him isn’t as painful to the network as it would be for the networks of the world to collectively and permanently turn their backs on that particular member of the Estevez clan. But still, it costs money to shoot a show and then shelve it. I’m glad that for now, VH1 isn’t interested in peddling that fantasy, and is willing to take the hit on the show.